A Book A Week

The great American author Cormac McCarthy, who passed away last month, became a reluctant phenomenon later in his life. His first novels went largely unnoticed until in 1992 All the Pretty Horses became a bestselling sensation. No Country for Old Men was adapted into a Best Picture-winning film, and his 2006 novel The Road earned him a Pulitzer and a spot in Oprah's Book Club. I even count that last work as one of my favorite reads ever. Through it all, the soft-spoken McCarthy didn't seem phased by his sudden fame. In fact, he stayed mainly out of the spotlight. For the last 16 years, fans of the author have clamored for any hint at what he may be working on next. True to form, McCarthy stayed quiet. Late last year, his publisher announced that not one but two sister books would be released by the author. As luck would have it, they sent me a copy of the first novel The Passenger to read and review. With the author's recent passing, I've finally decided to give it a go. 

The novel begins with a thrilling setup. Bobby Western (yes, that's really his name) is at the bottom of the ocean floor, just off of the Gulf Coast. Western and his partner are looking into the wreckage of a downed plane. As the pair remove the door and peer inside, they are shaken by what they see. Nothing about the scene rings as sincere. The passengers are all still strapped into their seats with no visible trauma. The pilot's flight bag and data box have disappeared from the cockpit. Had someone else already visited this site? Days later, no word of the crash or victims has broken on the local news. When two men with badges show up at Western's New Orleans apartment, he's already expecting them. What he's not expecting is what they ask him. They want to know how many bodies he saw in the plane because one of the passengers is missing. 

As you can probably imagine, this setup caused me to believe I was about to get into a thriller in a similar vein as McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. Indeed, the events following the initial premise involve Western going off the grid. Everyone he talks to tells him he's a marked man. He takes all of his money out of the bank and hits the road. It is after this that the novel takes a turn that left me completely befuddled. The thrilling opening gives way to a book that sees the author take on a contemplative rambling that left me more confused than intrigued. Bobby Western begins to encounter different characters from his past, each inspiring deep tangents about subjects that never truly amount to much of anything. 

We learn that Western is still in mourning for his late sister, a brilliant mind who was institutionalized at a psychiatric facility where she ultimately succumbed to her delusions. Western describes his love for this woman as an incestual pining that goes well beyond the normal boundaries of sibling affection. As if this relationship isn't strange enough, McCarthy peppers in flashback scenes from the sister Alicia's perspective. She is visited in her bed at Stella Maris, the psychiatric facility, by vaudevillian hallucinations that torment and entertain her. These chapters appear before each continuation of the action in the present day, growing more and more difficult to decipher as they repeat. 

"The first thing is to locate the narrative line. It doesnt have to hold up in court. Start splicing in your episodics. Your anecdotals. You’ll figure it out. Just remember that where there’s no linear there’s no delineation."

The novel is at its best when it is working as a gritty exploration of a man on the run, attempting to piece together his life after the devasting loss of his sister. It is in these passages that I found glimmers of the things that I've appreciated in McCarthy's previous works. Even when nothing particularly interesting is happening, McCarthy has a way of finding the profound within the mundane. Bizarrely, though, he seems to lose interest in the novel he opens with, altogether abandoning the plot that set up the opening suspense in favor of a hodge-podge collection of meandering thoughts. There are tangents about the making of the atomic bomb, JFK assassination conspiracies, and even a story about the life of a transgender woman. It felt as if McCarthy was trying to fit every last bit of any topic he ever wanted to write about into the confines of this book. As their own pieces, these elements have varying levels of success. Within the scope of The Passenger, however, they merely dilute the narrative beyond comprehension. There is one more book titled Stella Maris that follows this one. It is written completely as a conversation between this protagonist's sister and her doctor in the psychiatric ward. After being challenged and frustrated by this work, I'm not yet certain I'll continue to read on. I may be better served by revisiting some of McCarthy's classics instead. 

For more information visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

(2023, 38)